Chapter 3. Nightmares.
“Sna- snape,” I stammered in genuine shock. It was him. Tall, foreboding, dark and beautiful. My heart was thudding, my hands were shaking. I desperately wanted to grab him, touch him, make sure he was real and in front of me. Still, my numbness and last bit of sense kept my eager hands pinned to my side.
“Nadine,” he acknowledged darkly, that familiar, irritated scowl and frown crossing his face.
God, it was too much. I had missed him. Missed him to the point where this was almost crippling.
“What are you doing here?” I gaped, still floundering in disbelief. I watched as his face twisted between something of a hateful sneer and a slight, sarcastic smile,
“Why Nadine, I’m here to see you,” he spat mockingly.
“I’ve missed you,” I said genuinely.
Snape frowned.
“Is the order inside? Are you going to let me in? Or are we going to continue standing here like gormless twits.”
I stood to the side silently and let him pass.
“They’re in the kitchen,” I said pointing towards the correct door. Snape billowed past me. As he was about to enter, I stopped him,
“Snape,” I said softly, daring to place a cold, trembling hand on his chest, “We need to talk.”
He didn’t answer, but the feel of his warm chest and the acceleration of the heartbeat beneath it, said it all.
I couldn’t bear return to the kitchen, where he would sit, cold and mean like there was nothing in-between us. It had been so long, and the moments we had shared before then had been so perfect they were dream like. I needed to know what they felt like again. I needed to know how they felt.
I sat on my dusty, grey bed, and thought of it all. Everything we had been through together, how this man had come into my life and changed everything.
The first time I saw him, looking at me from the high table back at Hogwarts. The way his eyes had held mine in intense fascination. Our first class together, where his slight, rare praise had been enough to make me shiver. Our first match of wits in his office, the time he made me dance with Malfoy and I realized what a bastard he was. That shaky, intimate weekend we had spent together making the potions. The day he pulled me out, cold and trembling from the black lake, the night we had danced together at the Yule ball and I had felt his warmth. Christmas, when all was out-in –the-open, where we had whispered how we felt. All the detentions. The frantic night when I had awoken in his bed after being overwhelmed by my mother. The evening in the storeroom, where we had been so close, and almost caught. The night in his room where everything had erupted in a way I wasn’t prepared for. The morning where we both felt the weight of how we felt. The night I had left him with his burnt out candles. The afternoon when I discovered who he was. That perfect moment in his office after the third task and the last day in my room where he said he loved me.
“I love you Ms Lync.”
“I Love you too professor.”
Stringing together these fond, sweet memories made it seem so easy didn’t it? Of course it wasn’t though. Loving Snape was painful, torturous and at times impossible. He was my teacher after-all. Our relationship was completely forbidden and a lot of the time, it hurt.
But it was also the most true and beautiful thing in my life. He was worth it. I had only hoped that this year, would be different. He had promised me he’d try.
